This is Not Goodbye
by Conser
Summary: They wouldn't be apart. Never again.Notes: Apocolyptic. Written before John ever showed up, so the family dynamic's different. Minor SamDean


**This is Not Goodbye**

It's the most inconsequential thing blowing around next to the road as they drive endlessly, a large piece of paper shining in the light.

Sam tunes out the harsh music playing in the car, imagines the paper is a poster from a young boy's room; a cool car, or maybe a girl. Maybe the girl is only wearing a swimsuit, and boy fought with his mom over putting it up.

Sam names the boy Max, in his mind. Who should have had a mom. A family, a future.

Dean reaches over and switches off the music with a flick of his wrist, shaking Sam out of his reverie. Sam doesn't mind, smiles at his brother. Dean grins back, and leans back in the driver's seat, closing his eyes and lifting his face to the light. His hand reaches for Sam's, as if he needs to know Sam's still there, when Dean can't see him.

There's no expression on Dean's face, but Sam thinks he looks at peace. He holds Dean's hand back, tightly, and still smiling, he leans back himself. He worries a little that the car will hit something, end everything against a tree, but what will happen will happen.

The first odd thing Sam thinks he noticed – what seems like forever ago – was that the werewolf he and Dean had been chasing hadn't stopped. Normally weres stopped at night and grabbed whatever they could eat; it was stupid with a hunter on your back, but they did it anyway.

This were ran east, and east, and east, even during the day. In the car, they could barely keep up.

Something greater than its hunger was scaring it east.

After that it seemed that every tiny thing has been running east. The weres and the shifters and the boogeymen run east. The bigger things, the angrier things, hold out longer, but eventually they just disappear, with no indication of what caused powerful forces to die.

Sam asks if they should be worried, but Dean just says that if everything wants to corner itself on the coast, that's fine with him. Easier to hunt, to kill.

They don't talk about what's behind them, in the west. They're running, too.

Normal people begin to notice. Bad things sweep through their towns and their cities. Gangs are mentioned, terrorists. No one knows what it is, everyone is afraid. It's harder for Sam and Dean to make money, now. Companies don't pass out credit cards as easily; too many people are disappearing to make it worthwhile. No one's in the mood to play pool, and the only ones willing to bet on poker are the angry ones they both know not to mess with.

Sam and Dean still don't talk, but they scour newspapers and sites for info. They find nothing, and they go drinking, waste last dollars on memories. That family they helped, that one time in California. They stumble back terribly drunk, and when Dean kisses Sam on the lips, so chaste, like they're twelve, Sam just sighs and holds his brother close. They stand still, then, in fading shadows.

To save on money, Sam and Dean start getting one-bed motel rooms. They begin the nights on opposite sides, but after five mornings Sam is still waking up to find Dean's head under his chin and their arms wrapped around each other. The sixth night he curls right into Dean's body, and Dean lest him, and Sam feels warm, even when the heater burns out.

The sky starts to grow brighter and brighter. It blinds everyone and people hide inside, only moving out to run east, always going east. They abandon houses, money, children; just running. This continues for weeks, and the heat starts to build.

Scientists and theologists on the radio use big words and avoid direct questions, but Sam and Dean know there's nothing to say. They're the experts in this sort of situation, and even they know nothing. They drive east.

It's so hot Sam and Dean wear only pants and use their shirts to keep their backs from sticking to the Impala's leather seating. They'd drive at night if they could, but night stopped coming ten days ago. They rest when they get tired.

Even with the heat, Sam and Dean continue to twist together in the night.

People are terrified, now. They're running, running, but no one ever goes west. Slowly heading east, Sam feels like the last man leaving a battlefield. Dean makes bad jokes, and looks at Sam all the time. Sometimes Sam just falls asleep in his lap; it's bad driving and Sam has creases on his face when he wakes up, but he wakes up with Dean's hands in his hair and can't mind being so close, so hot.

The towns they visit are empty now, everyone long gone. They're full of signs of life; food and toys and even a few cars left, but Sam feels the emptiness of it.

They run into one last vampire, hidden in a basement, mad with hunger and fear. Sam's the first one down the steps and it leaps at him, black face and outstretched hands. It has him on the ground, barely able to breathe, when Dean comes up behind it and kicks it off Sam with a blow to the head.

Dean's gun is in his right hand, but he doesn't use it and instead starts punching the vamp in the face. Weak beyond its initial rush, the vamp is still strong enough to retaliate and cut Dean up badly with its claws before Sam can recover and shoot it with his own gun.

Patching up Dean that night, they have their first fight in a long time. Sam yells that Dean should have shot it, what was he thinking, not using the fucking gun? Dean just bites back that it was going to kill him, and when Sam says that's why he should have shot it, Dean just growls, shakes his head and pulls Sam into his arms. He tells Sam that Sam's all he has left. That Sam can't leave him.

Sam tells him that he loves him, too.

Now that the homes are abandoned and the beds free, they hold each other in the glowing nights. They gauge days by their watches and go into basements and every night Sam is somehow cooled by Dean's breath on his skin.

Dad calls, once. The reception is terrible. Dean picks it up and pulls the car over for the first time in thirty-six hours. He listens frantically and gasps out broken sentences Sam knows his father has interrupted. Dean hands the cell to Sam, but when Sam tries to listen he can't hear anything anymore. He puts the phone down, so slowly.

Dean says their Dad's coming. Sam doesn't ask how he'll get to them.

They both know their dad won't come. Dean just refuses to admit it.

Eventually, everything disappears. There're no more monsters, no more people, no more signs of life at all. There's nothing around them. Sam says aloud one day, simply and with no emotion, that they're going to die, and Dean doesn't say anything for a long time.

They have all the time in the world to talk now, but they don't say much, they just take longer to speak.

Eventually Dean says that it isn't such a bad way to go, doing what they've always done, fighting the good fight. He looks as Sam hopefully, wanting him to agree, and Sam doesn't have the heart to point out that they haven't fought anything in a month, that they're only fighting by trying to live while the west comes, and that they're losing.

Instead he says that he wouldn't want to die with anyone else. He makes it a joke, gives Dean his out. No chick moments.

This close to whatever end, Sam allows himself to finally think of Jess in terms beyond his guilt. When he does, he thinks of her hair, and how it would have glowed in this light, how her smile always seemed to make things brighter, and how when he had actually thought about it at all, Sam had never truly believed he would end his life with her.

Dean looks over at Sam one day and makes him promise that if anything happens to him, Sam won't stick around looking for him, but that he'll get in the Impala and keep going, heading east, find Dad. Sam promises. He would have given Dean anything at this point, but Sam knows he's lying. He thinks Dean knows it too, but if he wants to pretend Sam could ever be happy and safe without Dean, Sam'll let him.

Sam has one dream about what's coming, but all that he sees is white light blinding him, and fire. It's so alike to what their lives are now, that when Sam wakes up in Dean's arms, he just rolls over, even if he doesn't sleep. He wraps his arms around Dean, clutches him closer. He presses his dry lips against Dean's chest and thinks to himself that he'll never let Dean go. Not without taking Sam with him.

Sam doesn't know what Dean thinks about all this. Dean drives 150 down the streets, but he looks so damn relaxed the whole time. Dean was always more ready to die than Sam was, to die for Sam, with Sam, so Sam just lounges in his seat, watches the scenery fly past, and enjoys their comfortable silence.

He doesn't think about the future. He thinks about the past.

He thinks of the fire Dean pulled him out of, once, so long ago. He thinks of how his first memory is of Dean teaching him, oh, so carefully, how to put out fires so they'll never spread, so they can't destroy. Their father who stood in the background, refusing to awknowledge the lesson.

Dean is his first memory, and Sam thinks Dean'll be his last, and the symmetry pleases him.

He stops thinking of Jess. Wherever she is now, she's no longer part of this world, and as much as he still loves her, her memory feels like something distant to him, now. He focuses on Dean. Dean, who turns to him throughout the day, and doesn't say anything, seemingly content to remind himself that Sam is still there.

Miracles of miracles, after months of being alone, they stumble into a town where there are still people. Turns out the town's surrounded by a forest no one will venture into, even if it's to run east. The town's people advise them to stay, beg them, for their safety, but Dean says they went through the forest to get in, they can go through to get out. All the same, when the town can't give them gas like the other empty towns they've stolen from, and they're forced to start walking, Sam's nervous for the first time in a months.

It's down to the wire, but he wants to hold onto his life. Needs to keep Dean.

Dean laughs and tell him to lighten up, it'll be fine, but when miles into the forest, Sam turns around to comfort himself with Dean's continued presence, Dean's not there.

Sam's feelings of nervousness explode into overwhelming terror in an instant. He whips around, not knowing how Dean could disappear while they walked through the middle of the wide road. Sam pulls out his gun and runs back and through the forest and around again, Dean, Dean, Dean, a mantra in his head, he can think of nothing else, nothing else matters. Finally he trips and can barely stand when he gets back up. He's at the edge of the forest, back at the town, and all he can think is how did he end up here? Dean wouldn't have come here, Dean would have kept going, expecting to meet Sam on the other side. Dean's waiting for him, somewhere.

Sam just has to find him.

He tries to turn around and go back, when a man from a nearby house darts forward and pulls him away. He says he hopes Sam's learnt his lesson now, and takes him into his house. Sam blearily thinks that he's generous for a man slowly losing his world.

The man appears less charitable when he pushes Sam up against a wall inside his house and shoves his tongue inside Sam's mouth. When Sam pushes him away and then hits him with his gun, insanely angry, the man cries out and runs from the house. Exhausted, Sam doubles over and laughs, high pitched and fast.

Then he runs back to the forest, to find whatever he can of Dean. His head is light, he feels detached, and he's already following his brother as he'd promised himself. Promised never to leave again, and here had Dean left him. But Sam was going to follow.

His expectations aren't high, though; hope seems an illusion now, but even when he'd imagined of the end, Dean had always been with him. Sam can't go without Dean. He continues along the road, but eventually loses even the hope of seeing Dean before he goes. This loss is why Sam freezes and just stares when, while walking down the wide road, Sam comes across Dean leaning confidently against a tree and grinning at him.

Dean laughs and stands up straight and cocky, the way he always would whenever he'd show up without Sam expecting him, they way he was when last Sam had seen him after the long lack of his presence, confident and hitting on his brother's girlfriend. Dean walks away into the forest, waving his hand in a motion Sam recognizes as a lazy command to follow.

Sam knows it isn't Dean, Dean would never willingly have left him, and while Dean would once have expected him to follow without explanation, the last months would have left Dean coming forward to grab Sam and making sure Sam follows, an expectant grin on his lips but hopeful look in his eyes.

This Dean is unconvincingly confident, and cold in all the heat, and not his brother.

Stunned, Sam waits there, until the thing with Dean's figure comes back and stares at him, exasperatedly. Sam knows it isn't Dean, but it's looking at Sam in a way he can't resist, in a way Sam thinks he'd always wished Dean would, like he needs Sam. So Sam sighs, chuckles softly, and walks toward the thing that looks like his brother. Behind his back, Sam cocks his gun. He knows he's got enough ammunition in it for the both of them.

He knows that if there's another side, Dean'll be waiting for him.


End file.
